


with our eyes open

by lionsenpai



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsenpai/pseuds/lionsenpai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosima and Delphine in motion. Set during season two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with our eyes open

Delphine is perfect.

She smiles biting her lower lip and laughs with her whole body, and all you can think of when she’s looking at you is how lucky you are that it’s her–that she’s your monitor. She can name over thirty kinds of wines and which meals they go with, all looking like she isn’t completely invested in the sequencing you’re working on.

Everything about her is pretty. She puts her hair up when she works in the lab, and it compliments her neck, the pale expanse of her shoulders. When you’re alone in the privacy–her words, not yours–of your DYAD gifted quarters, she lets her hair down and talks about how dreary the place looks, how a bit of color and clutter would make it feel more like a home. 

“It’s not a home,” you tell her, trying to be discrete when you look into the mirror to tell if it’s double-sided. You remember a sure way to tell, something about pressing your fingernail to the glass and seeing if the reflection touches, but you read about it online on a Thursday night at roughly 3am, and you can’t remember exactly how it goes. Disappointed, you turn away. 

Delphine is there looking at you, an adorable pout on her red lips. In her hands are crimson drapes, but you can’t help noticing the way she sets them down without a moment’s hesitation, smoothing the fabric on the metal table, and comes to you. She smells like apples and autumn, crushed leaves beneath your heels and the hope of change to come.

You melt into her when she sets her hands on your cheeks and presses a kiss to your forehead. “Give it time,  _ma chérie,_ ” she says, and you get lost in the milk chocolate of her eyes.

She makes you want to crush down the thought as it occurs to you, call it traitorous and spit in its face.  _This is the real lab_ , it says.  _This is where DYAD wants me. This is not a home._

Delphine kisses you again, this time on the lips, and while she slides her hands behind your neck and you push up into her, that thought fades away into a fuzz of white noise.

(later, while you’re brushing patterns onto her bare shoulder, the duvet pulled up to your armpits, you decide the mirror is normal. what use is it when you let them into your bed, when you can’t say know to those pretty lips, those beautiful eyes?

you let them watch you, and they don’t even need to bug the room to do it. you lean in to kiss her and set your forehead to hers, eyes closed; so trusting.)

*

You’re making progress on the sequencing.

DYAD has extensive resources, and you make use of all of them, including the video logs and body of a highschool teacher who looks like a mix of Allison and Sarah on tape and exclusively like Katja Obinger when she’s a slab of cold meat on an operating table.

“The polyps aren’t cancerous,” Delphine says, pulling off her rubber gloves, coated in blood that is your sister’s.

“I know,” you say a little too quickly, clicking your pen furiously over a copy of her medical records, bent all the way over the table. You notice the stiffness of her shoulders, the concern of her features in the reflection of all the shiny metal around you and try again. “They ate up her healthy tissue until there was nothing left for her to breathe with. I think I saw a House episode like this once.”

“House?” she asks, moving in close and looking over your shoulder. Her hand is on your arm, her elbow on the table beside yours. Every part of you save one wants nothing more than to nuzzle back into her, and it is only the blood on the sleeve of her lab coat, dark red against white, that stops you.

“An old medical show. Nevermind,” you say, trying hard to fight the heat rushing through you at her proximity.

“We should clean up,” she says, her lilting, accented voice music to your ears.

“Anything to get out of here,” you agree, straightening out and beginning to close up Jennifer Fitzsimmon’s pakcets. She helps you tidy up, and it’s easy to forget you just dissected another you with her. It’s easy to forget anything with her.

“Delphine,” you say, and somehow it sounds right when you say it. “What happened to her monitor after she died?”

Delphine’s flawless face goes stricken, pulled up into lines and sharp angles: the dip of her brow, the line of her frown. She sets her hand over yours, and it makes your heart flutter. She kisses your brow, your eyes wide open, and says, “I don’t know,  _ma chérie_. Try not to think about it.”

You want to say it’s all you can think about these days, but it comes out: “Eww. Kisses after an autopsy? Gross.”

*

Delphine dresses up your room as best she can. She gets the minimalistic metal furniture switched out for carved oak and wood, and though she can do nothing about the white tile floor, she covers it with plush rugs. There are paintings of French landscapes hung next to posters of weed, and your combined clutter has blocked out the whole  _lab rat_ feel. It’s easy to lose yourself there now.

 That’s why she’s perfect for you.

You don’t think about what happens to your other blood sample, don’t wonder why she seems so familiar with Leekie’s office. It’s the first time you met all over again, and you still lean in to kiss her like a fool every single time. You lose your concerns in her, in her tastes and smells and pretty, pretty words. She knows what to say to soothe you, knows how to smile so your mouth goes dry. Delphine is gorgeous and smart and looks at you like she really, really,  _really_  does love you, but in your more lucid moments, you think this might be more of her, more of what she is.

Delphine is a pretty lie, and she’s everything you could ever want. 


End file.
